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Friday, August 12, 2016

ON MY RADAR (8-12-16 edition): Books that have hit my radar...

Here are some books that have recently hit my radar and set off my alarm bells...

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

How well do you know the couple next door? Or your husband? Or even—yourself?

People are capable of almost anything. . . Anne
and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful
home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a
dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion
immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more
complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling
account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that
the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon
discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for
years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a
family—a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that
will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.

The One Man by Andrew Gross1944. Physics professor
Alfred Mendl is separated from his family and sent to the men’s camp,
where all of his belongings are tossed on a roaring fire. His books, his
papers, his life’s work. The Nazis have no idea what they have just
destroyed. And without that physical record, Alfred is one of only two
people in the world with his particular knowledge. Knowledge that could
start a war, or end it.
Nathan Blum works behind a desk at an
intelligence office in Washington, DC, but he longs to contribute to the
war effort in a more meaningful way, and he has a particular skill set
the U.S. suddenly needs. Nathan is fluent in German and Polish, he is
Semitic looking, and he proved his scrappiness at a young age when he
escaped from the Polish ghetto. Now, the government wants him to take on
the most dangerous assignment of his life: Nathan must sneak into
Auschwitz, on a mission to find and escape with one man.The One Man, a historical thriller from New York Times
bestseller Andrew Gross, is a deeply affecting, unputdownable series of
twists and turns through a landscape at times horrifyingly familiar but
still completely compelling.

Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down by Anne Valente

The lives of four
teenagers are capsized by a shocking school shooting and its aftermath
in this powerful debut novel, a coming of age story with the haunting
power of Station Eleven and the bittersweet poignancy of Everything I Never Told You.

As
members of the yearbook committee, Nick, Zola, Matt, and Christina
struggle to capture all the memorable moments of their junior year at
Lewis and Clark High School amid documenting a horrific tragedy—a deadly
school shooting by a classmate. But the shooting is only the first
inexplicable trauma to rock their small suburban St. Louis town. A
series of mysterious house fires have hit the families of the victims
one by one, pushing the grieving town to the edge.

Matt, the son
of the lead detective investigating the events, plunges into the case on
his own, scouring the Internet to uncover what could cause a fire with
no evident starting point. As their friend pulls farther away, Nick and
Christina battle to save damaged relationships, while Zola fights to
keep herself together.

A story of grief, community, and family, of the search for understanding and normalcy in the wake of devastating loss, Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down
explores profound questions about resiliency, memory, and recovery that
brilliantly illuminate the deepest recesses of the human heart.